5. Jennifer Lawrence - Hunger Games
Lawrence made every step of the transition plausible and compelling, winning and sustaining the audience’s rooting interest while transforming herself into a character who’s equal parts role model, action hero, and extraordinarily accurate archer.
4. Milla Jovovich - Resident Evil
As Alice, the straight-shooting, neck-breaking, chemically-enhanced heroine who battles zombies inadvertently spawned by a multinational corporation, Milla Jovovich has been wowing fans with her purposeful stride, graceful agility, and fiercely determined grimaces for so many movies.
3. Kate Beckinsale - Underworld
Ever since the original “Underworld” (2003) launched the ongoing mythos of a centuries-old blood feud between vampires and werewolves, Kate Beckinsale has loomed large on multiple platforms as Selene, the duster-cloaked, spandex-clad vamp warrior who favors blazing guns over bared fangs, and routinely displays her supercharged offensive and defensive skills with slo-mo acrobatics.
2. Charlize Theron - Mad Max: Fury Road
Prior to playing an 'Atomic Blonde', Charlize Theron was bald, bold, and bulked-up as Imperator Furiosa, a one-armed warrior who joins forces with post-apocalyptic antihero Mad Max to outrun the army of a hideously disfigured tyrant, Immortan Joe, and lead fugitive “breeders”.
1. Uma Thurman - Kill Bill
Quentin Tarantino exuberantly sampled visual and dramatic elements from his favorite ‘60s and ‘70s movie, while concocting his over-the-top 2003-2004 diptych about a vengeful ex-assassin known only as The Bride. Uma Thurman vividly essayed this unstoppable anti-heroine with impressive poise and ferocious physicality as she sliced and diced her way through a string of former associates, scores of guilty bystanders, and anyone else who stood in the way of her settling accounts with the titular antagonist.